Growing a
Family of Apps
Then there were the
applications themselves. The team
developed 14 initial apps, including
tools for monitoring
medication intake,
temperature and
sleeping habits. Each
one needed to work
intuitively and effectively, and became a
project of its own.

The process began with lunch meetings during
which the Sen.se team brainstormed unique things
that Mother and her Motion Cookies might be
able to achieve. Once an idea received preliminary
approval, the team would design a prototype and
test it in the company’s offices. Subsequent versions incorporated smarter algorithms based on
the earlier tests, ultimately leading to more formal
user testing.

To guarantee the finished project would satisfyend users’ needs, the Sen.se team field-tested eachapplication. For example, the team used Facebookto recruit 60 people who volunteered to test a sleepanalysis app over two months. “This is not some-thing you can simulate,” Mr. Haladjian explains.“You need real people sleeping real nights in theirreal bedrooms.”Through the project’s field tests, the teamtweaked the apps in a variety of circumstances thatcould challenge a motion sensor: two people sleep-ing in the same bed, for example, or people who siton their bed to put on their socks.

In Search of Synchronicity

The greatest project management challenge the
Sen.se teams faced was how to minimize problems
created by the simultaneous development of Mother’s major components: the platform containing the
server-side software, the hardware and the apps.
The fact that all were evolving simultaneously made
it difficult for any team to move forward, because
basic choices made by another team would impact
everyone by shifting common variables.

In 2012, Mr. Haladjian figured out a simple solution: pull all the teams into the same room. The
company had been split among three offices until
that point, but once Mr. Haladjian united them in
one office in a suburb of Paris, miscommunication
and friction immediately diminished.

“If someone made a change, now everybody wasaware immediately because that person could justshout the information through the room,” Mr.Haladjian says. “It was the most efficient way tomake everybody aware of how all the pieces weremoving. After we made that change, things startedto move forward.”Although the project took longer than plannedand went over budget due to the unexpected num-ber of iterations required, Mr. Haladjian is happywith the result. Sen.se presented Mother at theJanuary 2014 Consumer Electronics Show, whereit received a Best of CES award. The product beganshipping to retailers and consumers in July.

To simultaneously track caffeine
intake, sleep patterns and workouts,
sensors are attached to a coffeemaker
and mattress, and placed in an
exerciser’s pocket. The sensors send
data to Mother.